Abstract. For a few years, a debate has been ongoing about a hegemony (in academic geography) of the
English language, of "Anglo-American" journals and of the approaches developed in the North
America and the UK. In many of the contributions to the debate, other languages and those who
speak them appear as excluded, oppressed and forced to submit to Anglo-hegemony.
But what kind of hegemony is this? The situation appears as a postcolonial one, and therefore it
should be analysed using postcolonial theory. From this perspective, there is on the one hand an
orientalist discourse, in which the coloniser's knowledge is the only valid one. These discourses
can also be applied by elites in the (former) colonies. On the other hand, debates about the
oppression of the "own" identity through the (former) colonisers are often means of an emerging
postcolonial elite trying to legitimize their position. In order to
analyse the debate about Anglo-hegemony, I draw on these concepts of
hegemony. The debate is, so the argument of the paper, connected with a
European elite formation – an elite that considers itself as
transnational, multilingual, hybrid and anti-hegemonic.